Various video encoding standards can process picture data in an order that is different than its raster order. Because a picture that represents a frame of video may be used to process a picture representing a subsequently received frame of video, it needs to be completely processed so that its rendered image is of appropriate quality. If not, its visual deficiencies will be propagated to the subsequently received frames. A method and apparatus for efficiently processing a video picture having picture slices that are received in an order other than render order would be useful.